The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker

Album Notes & Community Reviews

In a deliberate move to appeal to the burgeoning folk-revival audience, producer Orrin Keepnews instructed the notoriously electric bluesman to record entirely on an acoustic guitar. Stripped of his usual amplified distortion, the sessions expose the profound, deeply rhythmic idiosyncrasies of his delta-rooted fingerpicking and deeply resonant, mournful vocals. The unvarnished intimacy of the recording effectively reintroduced his foundational rural origins to a new, largely collegiate demographic.